Advent is to Christmas what Lent is to Easter

Did you know that advent always begins the fourth Sunday before Christmas and ends Christmas eve? I didn't. I also didn't know that the earliest advent can ever begin, depending on where the Sunday falls, is November 27th. Oh No...that was Monday...I'm already late! 

'Already late for what?' you may ask: For getting the tree up? For beginning my christmas shopping? For planning a cookie exchange? For wrapping presents? No! I'm 'Already late' in celebrating what the Bible calls the good news of great joy which will be for all the people (Luke 2:10). 

John Piper says "Advent is for adoring Jesus." Consider these four ways to spiritually prepare your heart this advent season:

1. Meditate on the fact that you need a Savior. Christmas is an indictment before it becomes a delight. Get it? Christ had to be born for one reason: To die for the sins of the world. Christmas will not have its intended effect in your heart until you grasp why you needed Christ to be born in the first place! Bittersweet, I know. But trust me, it works. You'll delight in him all the more when you embrace what he did for you.
2. Engage yourself in sober self-examination. Advent is to Christmas what Lent is to Easter. Think Psalm 139:23-24: Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.
3. Build Christ-centered excitement and anticipation in your home. Christmas must not be all about the presents under the tree but instead about the most magnificent present of all; the present God gave to the world: His only son to pay the price for our sin! How will our children ever cultivate a thirst for God if we don't instill in them the wonder of Christ's arrival on this earth?
4. Read your Bible every day. Don't put it off or set it aside thinking you're too busy with other christmas preparations. Spend this time reading the great scriptural passages about why Jesus needed to be born. Passages like Isaiah 53, Romans 8 and Isaiah 61. Then get to know Luke 2, the actual christmas story as told so eloquently by Linus in the below clip from "Charlie Brown Christmas."

Don't be late; begin celebrating now. Why? Because Joy to the world, the Lord has come! Let earth receive her King! Let every heart prepare him room and [let] heaven and nature sing!